AUSTRALIA
Sydney Morning Herald
February 6, 2015
Jane Lee
Legal Affairs Reporter for The Age
The head of a Sydney rabbinical college says he was not aware that inappropriately touching a child could be criminal when one of his students left Australia amid accusations of child sexual abuse.
Rabbi Yosef Feldman, whose father, Rabbi Pinchus Feldman, is the head of Sydney’s orthodox Chabad community, also told the royal commission into child sexual abuse on Friday that he believed:
* Child sexual abuse was “not common” and did not affect more than 30 per cent of society
* Understanding the nature of abuse and responding to abuse allegations were largely a matter of “common sense”.
* Since he and his father failed to prevent his student, known as AVL, from leaving Australia, he said he had not undertaken formal training in child sexual abuse
* Rabbis, he said, should be trained in how to deal with child sexual abuse. But the rabbinical curriculum now only mentions abuse as it relates to Jewish law
Rabbi Feldman was the administrative director of the rabbinical college at orthodox Jewish institution Yeshiva in Sydney in 2002, when a parent complained that a man – known as AVL – had massaged their child while lying beside them.
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